prosiopesis

English edit

Coined in 1917 by the Danish linguist Jens Otto Harry Jespersen:^[1] pro- (“before”) (from the Ancient Greek preposition πρό (pró)) + σιώπησις (siṓpēsis, “taciturnity”) (from σιωπάω (siōpáō, “to be silent”)) + -σις (-sis), (-sis, suffix forming nouns of action).^[2]^[3]

(Received Pronunciation) enPR: prŏs'ĭōpēʹsĭs, prŏ'sĭəpēʹsĭs, IPA^(key): /ˌpɹɒsɪəʊˈpiːsɪs/^[2]^[3] /ˌpɹɒsɪəˈpiːsɪs/^[3]
(General American) enPR: prŏs'iōpiʹsĭs, IPA^(key): /ˌpɹɑsioʊˈpisɪs/^[3]
Rhymes: -iːsɪs
Hyphenation: pros‧i‧o‧pe‧sis

prosiopesis (countable and uncountable, plural prosiopeses)

(grammar) Ellipsis of the beginning of a grammatical construction,^[2]^[3] common in informal speech and spontaneous written electronic communication, frequently occurring in stock phrases and interjections.
The students of English were making good progress in getting to grips with the intricacies of informal constructions, peppering their conversations with proverbial idioms and substituting stock phrases like “Good morning!” and “Thank you.” with prosiopeses like “Morning!” and “‛Kyou.”
- 2003, David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, 5th edition, Wiley–Blackwell, →ISBN, page 159, →ISBN:
  Traditional rhetoric was much concerned with the phenomenon of elision, because of the implications for constructing well-formed metrical lines, which would scan well. In rhetorical terminology, an elision in word-initial position was known as aphaeresis or prosiopesis, in word-medial position as syncope, and in word-final position as apocope. A similar classification was made for the opposite of elision, intrusion.

(forms of word-elision): (from word-final position) apocope, aposiopesis; (from word-medial position) syncope, *synsiopesis

^ Negation in English and other languages, volume 1, № 5, by Otto Jespersen (1917; A.F. Høst), page 6
Now, when the negative begins a sentence, it is on account of that very position more liable than elsewhere to fall out, by the phenomenon for which I venture to coin the term of prosiopesis (the opposite of what has been termed of old aposiopesis): the speaker begins to articulate, or thinks he begins to articulate, but produces no audible sound (either for want of expiration, or because he does not put his vocal chords in the proper position) till one or two syllables after the beginning of what he intended to say.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 “prosiopesis” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)
↑ ^3.0 ^3.1 ^3.2 ^3.3 ^3.4 “prosiopesis, n.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (draft revision, June 2008)